BACKGROUND: The Associated Press ran a global warming
story1 this past weekend that makes the following
statements:

"Carbon dioxide, the gas
largely blamed for global warming, has reached record-high levels
in the atmosphere after growing at an accelerated pace in the
past year..."

"Carbon dioxide, mostly
from burning of coal, gasoline and other fossil fuels, traps
heat that otherwise would radiate into space."

"Global temperatures increased
by about 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.6 degrees Celsius) during the
20th century, and international panels of scientists sponsored
by world governments have concluded that most of the warming
probably was due to greenhouse gases."

TEN SECOND RESPONSE:
How many scandals does the mainstream press need before it starts
routinely running stories through fact-checkers?

THIRTY SECOND RESPONSE:
Faulty "news" stories like this one, which mislead
people all over the world, are one of many alarmist global warming
reports by the news media that do not reflect a consensus of
scientists. What is more alarming than what scientists genuinely
know about global warming is that a media outlet as influential
as the AP would run a wire story this faulty, and that so many
news editors would be gullible enough to run it.

DISCUSSION: A brief
refutation:

Quote 1: The AP said: "Carbon dioxide, the
gas largely blamed for global warming, has reached record-high
levels in the atmosphere after growing at an accelerated pace
in the past year..."

Facts:
Carbon dioxide is not the major greenhouse gas (water vapor is).2

Carbon dioxide accounts for
less than ten percent of the greenhouse effect, as carbon dioxide's
ability to absorb heat is quite limited.3

Only about 0.03 percent of
the Earth's atmosphere consists of carbon dioxide (nitrogen,
oxygen, and argon constitute about 78 percent, 20 percent, and
0.93 percent of the atmosphere, respectively).4

The sun, not a gas, is primarily to "blame" for global
warming -- and plays a very key role in global temperature variations
as well.

Quote 2: The AP said: "Carbon dioxide, mostly
from burning of coal, gasoline and other fossil fuels, traps
heat that otherwise would radiate into space."

Fact:
Most of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does not come from
the burning of fossil fuels. Only about 14 percent of it does.5

Quote 3: The AP said: "Global temperatures
increased by about 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.6 degrees Celsius)
during the 20th century, and international panels of scientists
sponsored by world governments have concluded that most of the
warming probably was due to greenhouse gases."

Facts:
Most of 20th Century global warming occurred in the first few
decades of that century,6 before the widespread burning of fossil fuels
(and before 82 percent of the increase in atmospheric CO2 observed
in the 20th Century7).

The Earth does not have "world
governments." It doesn't even have even one, as the United
Nations is not a government, but an association of nations.

If the AP is referring to the
United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the
AP should become aware that the IPCC report itself (the part
written by scientists) reached no consensus on climate change.
What did reach a conclusion was an IPCC "summary for policymakers"
prepared by political appointees.8 Most reporters quote only the summary, being
either too lazy or too undereducated to understand the actual
report. This does not explain, however, why reporters don't more
frequently interview scientists who helped prepare it -- scientists
such as IPCC participant Dr. Richard Lindzen of MIT, who says
the IPCC report is typically "presented as a consensus that
involves hundreds, perhaps thousands, of scientists... and none
of them was asked if they agreed with anything in the report
except for the one or two pages they worked on." Lindzen
also draws a sharp distinction between the scientists' document
and its politicized summary: "the document itself is informative;
the summary is not."9

John Carlisle, "Kyoto
Cover-up: TV News Gives One-Sided View on Global Warming,"
National Center for Public Policy Research National Policy
Analysis #337, May 2001, http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA337.html

(3) Gerald Marsh, "Climate
Change Science? National Academy of Sciences Global Warming Report
Fails to Live Up to Its Billing," National Center for Public
Policy Research National Policy Analysis #349, August
2001, at http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA349.html.

(4) Edward Klappenbach, "Examining
the Carbon Dioxide in Our Atmosphere," About.com, downloaded
from http://weather.about.com/cs/atmosphere/a/aa062003a.htm?terms=carbon+dioxide
on March 21, 2004. Klappenbach gives the CO2 figure as .033 percent.
Note: The Associated Press article being critiqued in
this Ten Second Response alludes to an increase in atmospheric
carbon dioxide concentrations as meaured at the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration's Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii.
The average annual percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere determined
by researchers measuring there for 2002 was .0373 percent. A
chart showing average annual CO2 concentrations as measured at
the Mauna Loa Observatory from 1958-2002 is available at http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/ftp/maunaloa-co2/maunaloa.co2
as of March 22, 2004.

(5) "Frequently Asked
Global Change Question: What percentage of the CO2 in the atmosphere
has been produced by human beings through the burning of fossil
fuels?," Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak
Ridge National Laboratory, March 2004, available at http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/pns/faq.html
as of March 21, 2004.

(6) This is based on a review
of global satellite and balloon temperature measurements and
high-quality U.S.-based surface temperature station measurements.
For additional details understandable to laymen, we recommend
the short document "There Has Been No Global Warming for
the Past 70 Years," published by The Center for the Study
of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change and available online at http://www.co2science.org/edit/v3_edit/v3n13edit.htm
as of March 22, 2004.

(8) Richard S. Lindzen, PhD.,
"Scientists' Report Doesn't Support the Kyoto Treaty,"
Wall Street Journal, June 11 2001 (a copy of this article is
available unofficially online at http://www.enerne.dk/lindzen_i_wall_st__j_.htm).
Dr. Lindzen, who is a professor of meteorology at MIT, participated
-- as a scientist -- in the preparation of the IPCC report cited
above and also was a member of the National Academy of Sciences
panel on climate change that summarized the IPCC report for the
U.S. government.